China Pacific Insurance aims for IPO
(Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-12-28 09:21

Shanghai-based China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co. is aiming for an initial public offering (IPO) sometime in the next two years, the company’s chairman Wang Guoliang said.

“It would happen within around two years’ time according to my estimate,” Wang said in an interview with the Economic Daily published yesterday.

Wang didn’t say on which exhange the company plans to list.

He said China Pacific Life Insurance Co., which is China Pacific’s unit and the country’s third-largest life insurer by revenue, will also likely go public at some stage. Wang is also chairman of the life insurance unit, in which U.S. private-equity firm Carlyle Group and Prudential Financial Inc. own a combined 24.98 percent stake.

“If conditions are good, the group company will surely go public,” Wang said. It will also be a good thing for China Pacific Life Insurance to be listed, he added.

Wang said that the company was aiming for an IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the short term, and also in other markets later.

China Pacific Insurance came up with an IPO plan as early as November 2004 but postponed it a month later, citing unfavorable domestic market conditions. At that time, it said it was considering issuing subordinated bonds before an IPO.

In the first 10 months of this year, China Pacific Life’s premium income was 30.84 billion yuan (US$3.81 billion), according to data from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, compared with 34.49 billion yuan for the full year of 2004.